"KDE has released a new version of the KDE Software Compilation. This month's edition of KDE SC is a bugfix and translation update to KDE SC 4.4. KDE SC 4.4.2 is a recommended upgrade for everyone running KDE SC 4.4.1 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE SC 4.4.2 multi-language support is more complete. KDE SC 4 is already translated into more than 50 languages, with more to come." Impromptu poll: Windows Phone 7 Series or KDE Software Compilation 4.4: which of the two rolls off the tongue the worst?

I agree... KDE4 has come a long way, from the horrible 4.0, to the still crap 4.1, to the STILL crap but getting noticeably better 4.2, and 4.3--the version that, while still containing bugs, it finally seems to be almost ready for day-to-day use (not perfect, and it has annoyed me several times, but I've been using it in the form of openSUSE 11.2 for a while now). I toyed around with the Chakra live CD earlier, which was nice, and I've seen some welcome improvements.

Meanwhile, I don't know if this is a Chakra-specific change, but I HATED Amarok's toolbar. If you could call it that, it only had a play/pause button and some text saying "go to the next track." Please tell me this isn't actually an upstream Amarok change... the interface blows.

Well, next time I try out Chakra (or some other 4.4 distro) I'll have to find that. But seriously, WTF?! Reduced functionality is not ALWAYS good! The new Amarok interface is one of the biggest and ugliest wastes of space I've ever seen in a GUI (as were the openSUSE 11.2 version's, but at least they left less open space).

One more question though. Once again in Amarok, I have been using the capability of just clicking either the time elapsed or time remaining to switch the two around. I noticed it does not work in Chakra... is it possible? For some reason my mind works better one way--and not the way that seems to be default. I do like having, at a glance, both the time remaining and time elapsed though--but my mind just works better when they're in a certain direction. Based on the previous response, my guess is that they for some reason butchered that too. Simplifying is good, but these are two examples of butchering too far.

I do like some of the things that KDE is doing, but these examples remind me of the braindead things the businessmen of for-profit businesses would do. Which, ironically, I was trying to get away from when I ditched Windows.

Debian still has not updated from 4.3. They used to be good about getting the updates into unstable, but that has fallen off recently. I was thinking of reinstalling a 64-bit OS, so perhaps I'll go Kubuntu next month.

Debian still has not updated from 4.3. They used to be good about getting the updates into unstable, but that has fallen off recently. I was thinking of reinstalling a 64-bit OS, so perhaps I'll go Kubuntu next month.

I'd recommend giving Arch a try first.
Having used Kubuntu in the past, Arch is streets ahead.

However Arch does require more set up time and a willingness to dip into the command line - so it's clearly not aimed at everyone.
But if you give it a bash first then at least you know you have Kubuntu as fallback

"Debian still has not updated from 4.3. They used to be good about getting the updates into unstable, but that has fallen off recently. I was thinking of reinstalling a 64-bit OS, so perhaps I'll go Kubuntu next month.

I'd recommend giving Arch a try first.
Having used Kubuntu in the past, Arch is streets ahead.

However Arch does require more set up time and a willingness to dip into the command line - so it's clearly not aimed at everyone.
But if you give it a bash first then at least you know you have Kubuntu as fallback "

Chakra is a way to have Arch without having to dip into the command line.

+1. I have been using that on Sid in one of my machines and for the most part, it works fine. I am not sure if I like the way that KDE SC 4.4 handles external media now - which is that it simply expands a menu of options beneath the media that has been plugged on the "storage media" plasmoid or whatever it is called with the options that used to appear on a separate dialog window previously - and thus I would like to see if there's a way to revert that to the previous behavior.

Also, for some reason all of the fancy effects used to switch applications when pressing Alt-Tab - such as cover flow that is the one that I use - no longer works and I was wondering if that is something unique to my setup or if it is something wrong with this release's packaging. In my case, it falls back to the "regular" Alt-Tab behavior on non-accelerated desktops.

Also, finally the Nepomuk/Strigi combo works as it is supposed to thanks to the brand new virtuoso backend but it still has ways to go if it wants to play on the same league of other more mature desktop searching tools.

Unfortunately, the team doing KDE packaging for Debian is severely over staffed - the number of packages and dependencies for KDE keeps increasing with each point release while the number of contributors remains flat - which means that it will be a while before we can see a proper release of the latest KDE on Debian with the quality of packaging and integration that we're used to.